


The Gods Owe Us

by Pam_beasley



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Assassin's Creed Odyssey
Genre: Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, Gen, character injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26177980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pam_beasley/pseuds/Pam_beasley
Summary: Set before the events of Odyssey, Kasssandra and Phoibe spend time talking, joking, and reflecting on what they had lost and what they could lose.—Written for the Eagle's Path Zine
Kudos: 15
Collections: The Eagle's Path | An Assassin's Creed Zine





	The Gods Owe Us

**Author's Note:**

> [The Eagle's Path:](https://eaglespath.carrd.co/) A free-to-download collection of assassin's creed artwork. My piece was made in collaboration with [Scrambled](https://twitter.com/ScramblyDoodles) who drew a companion piece!!

Children swarming the foothills of Kephallonia wasn’t the most unusual occurrence—in an island as dull as Kephallonia, people had to create entertainment for themselves somehow. The variable that caught Kassandra’s attention, however, was Phoibe, leading the swarm of children with her eyes full of wonder and mischief. Kassandra knew that look, she had seen it many times, and trouble would most certainly follow. 

Phoibe stood tall, her chest puffed. “Zeus gave her the eagle himself.” She stretched her arms out, mimicking broad wings, and her voice rang through the air. 

The crowd leaned in. 

“With him, the great Eagle Bearer can fly!” Flawlessly, she turned to the steep cliff behind her. She found a handhold and pulled herself off the ground. Phoibe sent the crowd a wide grin over her shoulder. Her eyes shone. “More god than mortal—”

Her arms shook slightly as she reached for another handhold. Tension hung in the air.

“—more warrior than citizen.”

She towered above the crowd.

Kassandra, always trained to expect the worst, a gift from years of working as a misthios, stepped forward. 

“Even the gods know not to cross her path!”

The crowd gasped in wonder. 

Phoibe stretched above her head in search of a handhold, and then her smile dropped.

The crowd gasped once more, this time in fear, and Kassandra’s instincts ignited, pushing her forward. 

Phoibe’s arms flailed.

Kassandra screamed, heart pounding. The crowd stepped back, pushing against her in their confusion.

Phoibe hit the ground. Crying out, she rolled slightly, and a string of colorful words flew from her lips. 

Kassandra rushed to her side. The children laughed, but Kassandra sent them a glare sharper than her dagger, using the fury Phoibe claimed not even the gods would cross, and they scattered. 

“What were you thinking?” Kassandra took Phoibe’s hands in her own and turned them over, gauging the injuries and checking for breaks. Blood gathered on Phoibe’s palms. Deep red contrasting her dark skin. Deep gashes tore across her flesh. “Are you hurt?”

Phoibe offered a cheeky grin. Her eyes still shone with mischief. “How high was I?”

Kassandra sighed in half relief and half exasperation. 

“You should be more careful!”

“Are you careful!”

“Of course! I—”

Phoibe looked at her pointedly, and Kassandra swallowed her words. She covered Phoibe’s face with her hand and pushed her back with a scoff. “Let’s get you patched up before you do anything else that could kill you.”

Phoibe threw herself dramatically on the ground, her arm pressed to her forehead in an exaggerated swooning motion. “I can’t go anywhere! I’m injured and dying.” She reached for Kassandra. “Carry me home, oh great misthios.”

Kassandra swatted her arm away. “You should have thought about that before you tried to climb that cliff.” She stood and offered Phoibe a hand. “Luckily for you, we won’t have to go far. There’s a herb at the top of this cliff I can use to help with the cuts. Or I can leave you here.”

“That’s okay! I’ll come!” Phoibe rushed to her feet. “So,” she asked with a grin, “we’re climbing it?”

“After that performance? Of course not!” She offered Phoibe an arm of support. “There’s a footpath around the bend.”

Phoibe walked with a slight limp, a deep gash around her calf, but with Kassandra patiently helping her, they worked their way up the winding path. 

At the top, Kassandra went to work, finding the proper material to tend to Phoibe’s wounds and alleviate the stinging. She could have reprimanded Phoibe some more, but no amount of scolding would have taken away Phoibe’s adventurous spirit, and Kassandra wasn’t one to try.

An eagle called to them, casting a shadow over the ground as he swooped toward them.

Kassandra grinned playfully and shouted, “You should have heard the stories Phoibe told about us, Ikaros!”

“Hey!” Phoibe sat so her legs dangled over the cliff ledge. Even with her injuries, she lived fearlessly, a reflection of Kassandra even if Kassandra wouldn’t admit it out loud. “They were good stories!”

“Never said they weren’t.” Kassandra settled next to her. Ikaros circled overhead. “Maybe next time, Ikaros will help you fly.”

Kassandra handed Phoibe a handful of herbs to chew while she searched her belongings for spare cloth. Normally, Kasssandra dressed wounds by herself, but there was something comforting about sitting beside Phoibe, and she knew, if she asked, Phoibe would be as willing to help Kassandra with her own injuries if the situation called for it.

Phoibe spit the chewed herbs into her hand, and Kassandra applied them to the wounds, working as tenderly as she could manage.

“You shouldn’t have climbed so high up.” The obligatory reprimands Kassandra needed to make as the elder. She wrapped Phoibe’s hand, ensuring the gashes were properly covered. “Good?”

Phoibe clenched and unclenched her fist then nodded. “You do it all the time,” she pouted. 

“I’ve had a bit more practice.”

Phoibe kicked her legs. She stared over the horizon and chewed her lip. 

“Speechless? That’s not like you.” Kassandra’s tone was joking, but it held an air of genuine concern. Maybe she had been too harsh. 

“Tell me a story,” said Phoibe.

“I’m no storyteller.”

“Please? Tell me something about Sparta.”

Kassandra pulled out another length of cloth, and Phoibe held out her wrist.

“Fine. Fine.” She wiped away the blood as she thought. “Life in Sparta is a bit more exciting than Kephallonia.”

“A bit?” Phoibe rolled her eyes with a laugh. “Everything is more exciting than Kephallonia.”

“They train their children for war,” Kassandra continued. She had always tried to stay away from the memories of her childhood, but as she spoke, her heart filled with longing. “I would spar with my father. He taught me to fight and protect my family.”

“Is that why you’re as strong as a demigod?”

“You compare me to the gods and their children, but if anyone rivals them, it’s my mother.” Kassandra secured the bandage and pretended to punch Phoibe as if she had wrapped her hands for a fight. “She’s the bravest, strongest woman in all of Greece.” The memory consumed her now, causing her to long for the warmth of her mother’s breast. “She’s as sweet as nectar, always treating others with absolute kindness, and she’s as fierce as a thunderstorm. You should see her when she’s angry.” Kassandra laughed at the wisps of her childhood that floated through the air. “Her wrath is explosive, and she’s as persistent as they come.”

“She sounds amazing!”

Kassandra smiled sadly. 

Ikaros swooped closer, and Phoibe extended a bandaged arm for him to settle on. She scratched his feathers and stared into the distance as if she saw past Kephallonia and into Sparta, reliving Kassandra’s past for her.

In a soft voice, Phoibe asked, “Do you miss your family?”

The question caught Kassandra by surprise. She had tried not to ponder it, recognizing some choices could not be undone.

Now, she looked at Phoibe. The two of them were so very different, and yet, in many ways, they were so very similar. 

“Every day.”

Phoibe absentmindedly ran her fingers over Ikaros’s feathers, her eyes glazed as they focused on nothing. Below them, goats bleated. Even from this height, they could hear the sea crashing against the shore. 

“You know,” Kassandra said, pushing the last bits of her memory away, “not being with them hurts, but I’m lucky enough to have another family. One as brave and strong.

Phoibe’s head jerked up. “Really? Who?”

Kassandra laughed at her genuine surprise and punched her shoulder. “Well, I have a pest of a younger sister named Phoibe.”

“Hey!” Phoibe nudged her, but her expression was one of relief. “You’re so mean.”

Although Kassandra’s heart ached for her lost family, Phoibe brought a familiar, overwhelming sensation of love she would never exchange.

“Can you promise,” Phoibe said in a voice that held maturity to it, a child who knew her share of tragedy, “to take me with you, no matter where you go?”

“Kephallonia is your home.”

Phoibe sighed. 

Kassandra exhaled. She had a dangerous job. Too dangerous to make a promise like that and completely uproot the life of a child like Phoibe. Despite the danger, however, she couldn’t leave Phoibe on her own, even if a day came when she’d have to leave Kephallonia. She had lost one family, and she wouldn’t lose another.

“No matter what happens,” Kassandra said, offering a promise that differed from the one Phoibe wanted her to make but that came from her heart nonetheless, “no matter the distance, we’ll always reunite.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Phoibe leaned against her shoulder, and Ikaros settled in her lap.

“How do you know?”

“The gods owe us that much.”


End file.
